Security Awareness Training Blog

Ransomware Blog

Keeping you updated on the latest ransomware attack vectors, strains, decryptors, families and trends to help you avoid becoming infected.

Heads-Up! Massive New Locky Ransomware Attack Is Coming

Jan Sirmer at the Avast blog wrote: "Based on analysis of past Locky ransomware attacks, experts in the Avast Threat Labs predict that another attack is imminent. Locky has taken a ...
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Healthcare Records Unavailable For Months After Ransomware Infection

Healthcare records of an Arizona clinic have not been available for months after a ransomware infection. The Desert Care clinic got infected in August, and they were not able to recover ...
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Disk-Killer Malware Adds Ransomware Feature And Charges $200,000+ 

Talk about adding insult to injury with this new KillDisk version. Here is how social engineering can cost you dearly. The Sandworm cybercrime gang has upped its game. They were initially ...
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L.A. County Phishing Attack: 750,000 record data breach

Confidential health data or personal information of more than 750,000 people may have been accessed in a cyberattack on Los Angeles County employees in May that led to charges this week ...
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The rise of ransomware-as-a-service. Stu Sjouwerman CSO Interview

My Interview at CSO About Ransomware-as-a-Service Joan Goodchild, Editor-in-chief at CSO sat me down and asked why Ransomware-as-a-Service has taken off recently: "It’s not just your ...
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IBM study: 70% of Businesses Attacked Pay Ransomware

A rather mind-blowing 70% of businesses hit by ransomware paid the hackers to regain access to hijacked systems and files, according to a new IBM X-Force Ransomware report. Of the ...
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[ALERT] Yikes, A New And Scary Double-Ransomware Whammy.

Sophos reported on one of the more scary ransomware strains I have seen lately. It's called Goldeneye and encrypts the workstation twice: both the files and the Master File Table (MFT). ...
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SanFran Muni Ransomware Hacker Gets Hacked Back!

A couple of weeks ago, a yet unknown attacker hacked the computer systems of the San Francisco’s Municipal railway causing a free ride for all that Saturday. The ransomware hacker was ...
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Want Your Ransomed Files Back? Just Infect Someone Else!

Larry Abrams just reported: "Yesterday a new in-development ransomware was discovered by MalwareHunterTeam called Popcorn Time that intends to give victim's a very unusual, and criminal, ...
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Locky Ransomware Campaign Using Osiris Extension from Egyptian Mythology

The threat actors behind Locky ransomware have moved on from Norse gods such as Zepto, Odin and Thor and into Egyptian mythology with a new campaign that uses the extension .osiris when ...
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Why Advanced Ransomware Is Cybercrime's Most Profitable Business Model

RSA did a revealing ransomware risk-reward analysis. See that $6 million number over to the right? Why does cybercrime like ransomware so much? Low Risk, High Payoff From the bad guy's ...
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Yes, that message is really from Facebook. And, yes, it's really malicious.

By Eric Howes, KnowBe4 Principal Lab Researcher Just two weeks after we reported that the bad guys had effectively converted LinkedIin into a phishing platform, Facebook once again found ...
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Ransomware Roundup November 2016

Crysis decryption keys posted The decryption keys of the Crysis ransomware were posted on Pastebin, which allows victims to decrypt their hijacked files without paying. Crysis was ...
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Healthcare Sees 20 Data Loss Incidents PER DAY Due To Ransomware

In late October, three of the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) hospitals’ computer systems were attacked by malware that forced the hospital to cancel scheduled surgeries and divert ...
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My Antivirus Failed The RanSim Test. How Do I Fix This?

So, you downloaded KnowBe4's Ransomware Simulator test and your antivirus security software failed one or more of the ransomware scenarios. When this happens we almost always get asked: ...
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New Locky Ransomware Phishing Attack: Credit Card Suspended And Suspicious Money Movements

Graham Cluley was the first to report on a new Locky ransomware phishing attack where the emails claim to be "credit card suspended" and "suspicious money movement" warnings. He said: "In ...
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New Version Of Nymaim Malware Targets High-Level Managers

A new version of the Nymaim malware family targets high-level managers with attached malicious Word documents and drops ransomware and banking trojans. The cyber research team at Verint ...
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Insurance underwriter Beazley: "Ransomware attacks will be four times higher in 2016"

The Wall Street Journal is getting the message. They said : "For companies concerned about the soaring number of ransomware attacks–in which hackers take control of data or systems and ...
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Ransomware Strain Count Surpasses 200

Michael Gillespie tweeted: "Whew! ID #Ransomware can now identify 200 ransomware families. :) Sad such a milestone was hit so quickly..." He added a list from the malwarehunterteam site, ...
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"My AV blocked RanSim.exe So I'm Safe" No You Are Not

I'm noticing a lot of people saying the ransim.exe file is getting blocked by your AV. You have to actually allow the initial processes to run to do the simulation. It is the five test ...
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